


everything ends (but everything begins again)

by triplesalto



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Canonical Temporary Character Death, F/F, Fix-It, Gen, Regeneration, Will Inevitably Be Jossed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2017-07-17
Packaged: 2018-12-03 07:56:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11527905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triplesalto/pseuds/triplesalto
Summary: The Doctor has a choice to make.Bill and Clara help him make it.





	everything ends (but everything begins again)

The Doctor is tired, here at the end.

He is so old these days. He has outlived so many civilisations, so many stars, so many people he has loved. This body is breaking down, falling to pieces around him, and he cannot face starting again. There was a reason Time Lords held to thirteen lives; eventually the strain becomes too great.

His younger self has done his best to persuade him to regenerate, to keep on living. They have talked long into the night – the Doctor is painfully aware of the minutes ticking away, now that time at last has a concrete meaning in the faltering rhythm of his hearts, the stutter of his breath in his chest – and yet have come no further. For his younger self is so very young, so very new. There are so many hundreds of years ahead of him, full of losses, defeats, and heartbreaks. Always the Doctor has picked himself up, moved on, kept fighting; but now, here at the end, he thinks it is time to sleep.

He has sent a companion to a painful doom because he was blind, because of his own willful self-delusion. For the sake of friendship, he gave Missy the opportunity to change, and that choice sent Bill into a living grave. And still Missy walked away from him at the last, choosing the Master – choosing herself – over the fragile understanding they had built. Now Bill is dead, joining the graveyard in his hearts, and it was him that put her there.

Who will he become if he regenerates now, her blood on his hands? Who will he become, if he changes? Who will he become if he has to start anew again? 

It is time to end.

“Sorry, old girl,” he says to the TARDIS, stroking her console. “I know you tried to save me – pulled me off a battlefield and took me away.”

It’s always been him and her. He hopes that when he’s gone she’ll find somewhere quiet for her own retirement; he should put her on self-destruct, to prevent anyone malicious from using her for evil, but he can’t bear to. She loved River. Perhaps she’ll go rest in her garden. 

“Sorry,” he says, listening to her hum. She sounds sad. He remembers when he held her in his arms, that one time. She is still the most beautiful thing he has ever known. “Goodbye.”

He lets himself back out into the snow. His younger self has gone, forced to acknowledge that it is the Doctor’s choice in the end, to live or to die. Only he can make that choice; and now, alone except for his most loyal friend and companion, he will.

There are tears in his eyes as he looks up at the stars. Frustrated regeneration energy simmers in his veins, and he feels dizzy. 

“I hoped there’d be stars,” he says, and the universe fades away.

❧

When he opens his eyes, Bill is smiling down at him.

 _His_ Bill, not the Cyberman she became. This must be the afterlife, then – odd, he has never believed in an afterlife, or at least not one that feels this tangible. Come to that, his body still throbs with incipient regeneration; is he destined to regenerate and live out his afterlife in a different face? The ways of the universe are passing strange.

“I leave you alone for one minute, old man, and you’re fainting in the snow.”

His attention snaps back to Bill, his eyebrows drawing together. “Fainting? Who said anything about fainting? I’m the Doctor, I don’t faint.”

“Victorian lady swoon,” Bill says, smirking. 

He tries to sit up. He’s back in the TARDIS, lying on a blanket. 

Bill’s hands are on his shoulders, pushing him down. “Take it easy. You look a right mess. What happened, you run into a Cyberman or something?”

She’s teasing, though there’s a touch of strain in her voice. Alluding to the way she died must be hard; the Doctor is glad that the universe let her retain her true self in the afterlife, even though it seems determined not to extend the same courtesy to him. He winces, pushing the regeneration energy down again. It gets harder every time.

“Something like that,” he says.

And then his fuzzled senses grasp what they’re comprending, and he looks down at the hands on his shoulders. 

“Sorry,” Bill says, taking them away. “I’m getting you all wet. Probably not good when you’ve been out in the snow, you’ll catch a cold –”

“Bill,” the Doctor says, and sits up again, dizziness be damned. There is a great roaring noise in his chest. It feels like hope. “ _Bill_.”

She grins. “That’s my name, Doctor. Well spotted.”

“You –” He swallows. If he’s wrong – but he’s not wrong. This is his TARDIS. The afterlife could never capture the precise tune of her hum, its warmth and joy. And this is Bill, actual Bill, real Bill – the afterlife could never capture the wicked curve of her smile. “You’re real.”

“Well, of course I’m _real_ ,” she says, her eyes laughing. “Wot, you thought I was a fake or something?”

“I thought you were dead,” he says, simply, because he is too tired for tact.

Something dark flits across Bill’s face. “Sort of was. Being a Cyberman is being dead, just with walking and stuff.” A shake of her hair clears it away. “But Heather fixed it.”

“Heather,” the Doctor says, and he knew it already, knew the instant he realised the meaning of the water streaming off Bill’s hands, but the confirmation feels like the sweetest news he’s ever heard.

The girl herself emerges from behind the TARDIS console. “Hello,” she says. She sounds shy.

“She left me her tears,” Bill is saying. “So after the battle, when I found you, I thought you were dead, right? And I cried. Shut up. It was the end of everything, of course I cried.”

The Doctor can see it. Him, dead on a battlefield, a Cyberman weeping over his corpse. 

“And then Heather came,” Bill says, and the way she smiles up at Heather would be enough to make Missy start huffing about the reproductive frenzy of human food chains and the illogic of human emotions. 

Missy. His hearts ache.

“You’re like her now, right?” he says, shoving away the pain and taking refuge in abruptness. “She changed you into a being like her?”

“I’m space oil all the way now,” Bill agrees, though she doesn’t look as troubled by the concept as he would have expected. But after being a Cyberman, being space oil must be quite a relief. “If I want I can be human again, but we’re travelling for a bit first, before I make up my mind. It’s a big universe out there, yeah? A lot for me to see.”

“It is,” the Doctor agrees. So big. So many lifetimes. 

“You’ve gone all yellow,” Bill says, frowning. “Are you s’posed to do that?”

He looks down at his hands. “Yes. But I’m not going to. Not this time.”

“He’s regenerating,” Heather says. He’d forgotten her for a moment, caught up in Bill. “Time Lords do it. He gets a new body, a new face. No dying.”

Bill’s eyes are alight with stars. “Doctor! That’s good news!”

He could lie. He could confirm that it’s good news, and ask for privacy to regenerate, and send her away. He could die as he had intended, alone and in peace; more in peace now, knowing that Bill lives, that he has not added her death to his list of regrets. Rule One: The Doctor lies.

But not today. Not now.

“I’m old, Bill,” he says. “I’ve lived long enough.”

“Bollocks to that,” she says. Her voice is rough, and there are tears in her eyes. He is glad to be able to see them now, glad to be able to set aside the memory of tears leaking from a Cyberman’s mask. “You’re giving up? Doctor, you never give up.”

“Is it giving up to die?” It’s a rhetorical question. “Your mother died. Do you think less of her for it?”

There is hurt in her eyes, and anger, and a tear falls. “You’re different! You’re not _human_. We need you, Doctor, the universe needs you! You’re –”

“The last of my kind?” he finishes, when she doesn’t. “The universe will manage without me.”

She crosses her arms. “You aren’t the last, and the universe won’t. Don’t forget Missy and the Master are still out there killing people, killing whole worlds. We need you to stop them.”

The Doctor stands up, leaning on the railing. His strength is ebbing away. “I’ve been responsible for Missy for sixty years,” he says softly, not looking at Bill. “I failed. I’m dying. It’s finished.” 

He traces the railing with a fingertip, feeling the TARDIS vibrate. “I’m letting go, Bill. Time Lords were intended to have thirteen lives. I’ve had my thirteen. I’m ready.”

“Well, _I’m_ not ready,” she says, fiercely, stepping to face him again and seizing one of his hands in her own. “I thought you were dead, Doctor, but I thought – where there’s tears there’s hope. And then I felt your tears, and we came, and I was so happy you were alive. Don’t take that away from me. Don’t make me lose you again.”

“Everything ends, Bill,” he says. He makes his voice gentle, gives her the kindness he can sense she needs. “Go. Explore the universe. Be kind, help where you can. And on days that you’re especially happy, or on very starry nights, spare a thought for your old Professor.”

There is no acceptance in her eyes, not yet. There is only grief and pain, and he is sorry for that. But acceptance will come, in time. Time heals.

He lets her pull him close, lets her bury her face in his neck. He is not a hugging Doctor, even after River taught him to tolerate casual touching. But he can give her this; he can hold her close; he can set her free. 

There is a sudden cold draft as the TARDIS door opens behind them. 

“And what exactly,” a strange, familiar, impossible voice asks, “is going on?”

❧

The Doctor does not whirl around, because he has no strength for whirling. That was more the style of Fez Boy, anyway. He spins on his heel instead, Bill still in the crook of his arm.

He knows the woman who stands in the doorway, her hands on her hips. The memories started to come back to him over the years, leaking through in bits and pieces, flashes of clarity and bursts of emotion. A Time Lord’s memory is hard to wipe; it’s all still in there, somewhere, just waiting to be rediscovered. Now the rest of it floods his consciousness, making him stagger.

His Impossible Girl looks the same as ever. He knows without having to ask that her heart hasn’t restarted. Me must have taken her away, must have saved her, but they are still on the road back to her death. 

“How are you here?” he asks. His voice doesn’t have much strength now. He’s running out of time.

Clara gestures to Heather. “She came and found us. She said you were dying and I needed to come talk some sense into you.”

“How did she –”

Bill cut in. “Heather says she didn’t do that.”

That answers one question that was nibbling at the back of the Doctor’s consciousness. Bill must be able to talk to Heather much more clearly than anyone else has been able to, now that they’re the same. It’s hardly an important matter right now, but the Doctor likes to know things. He always has.

“Well, she will then,” Clara is saying, looking unconcerned. “Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey, as an old friend used to say. You’ll find us in Australia in the year 5074.”

Heather melts into the floor obediently. Clara transfers her attention back to the Doctor. “I’d suspect your TARDIS had something to do with that. She loves you, Doctor. Just like we do.”

She looks interrogatively at Bill.

“Hi, I’m Bill,” Bill says. “I was a Cyberman for a while and now I’m immortal space oil. That was my girlfriend Heather.”

Clara smiles. Oh, how the Doctor has missed that smile. “I’m Clara. I was a Dalek for a while – actually the Doctor almost shot me, thanks to Missy. I don’t suppose she’s around somewhere? Did she shoot him?”

“No, that was Cybermen,” Bill says. “Though she may have had something to do with it. She was the one that turned me into a Cyberman – or at least, the man she used to be did. I wouldn’t put anything past her.”

“You can recover from Cybermen,” Clara says, walking closer. The Doctor is leaning on Bill now, relying on her strength to hold him up; he feels in his bones that if he collapses, he will never get up again. He is caught between them, his companions and his friends. “Stop playing around, Doctor. Regenerate.”

He doesn’t have the strength to argue again. “I’m old and tired, Clara. It’s my time.”

She shakes her head. “Don’t give me that. Why are you doing this?”

He has lost so many people he has loved. He has killed. He has striven so long to be kind, to be a good man, to protect the helpless and comfort the hopeless. He has lived so many lifetimes, fought so many fights. It is the natural end to him now, and he is ready.

“He thought he lost me,” Bill tells Clara. “Maybe he blames himself.”

“But you’re alive. You were saved.”

“No thanks to me,” the Doctor says, under his breath. 

There is silence on the TARDIS bridge for a moment. Bill is wet but strong, holding him up. He can feel Clara’s eyes on him, but he doesn’t raise his own.

“Look at me, Doctor,” Clara says, softly.

He is not a coward. He raises his head.

Clara has that look, the one he knows so well. It’s her stubborn look, her brilliant look, her bossy look. “I’m only going to say this once,” she says, holding his eyes. “Stop putting the whole world on your shoulders. We make our own choices. And we _lived_ , Doctor. Bill and I – we’re alive! We’re standing right beside you. We’re with you.”

His chest feels tight.

“If you want to die, I can’t force you to regenerate,” Clara says. “If River was here, she probably could, but I can’t. I can _ask_ you to. I can ask you not to leave us alone – I can ask you not to abandon us. The universe would be a much colder place without you. But in the end, if you want to go, I’ll stay with you to the end.”

“I will too,” Bill says, loyally. Her voice is thick with tears.

Clara smiles at her. 

Out of the corner of his eye, the Doctor sees Heather rematerialising. She drifts over to the other side of the TARDIS, then through the door. Perhaps she has gone to keep Me company, no doubt waiting in their own TARDIS outside.

He stands between two friends he thought he had lost forever, two friends he thought had been lost to the void through his own actions. Now they are alive again, and he feels a weight lift, a weight he hadn’t even known he’d been carrying. He has so many regrets, so many losses; there is a joyous relief singing in his veins, knowing that the score is lessened.

“We love you, Doctor,” Clara says. “It’s your decision.”

An hour ago, darkness seemed so inviting. An end to it all – an end to the struggle, an end to the fight, an end to the constant regenerations and reinventions. He wouldn’t have to change, he wouldn’t have to begin anew. He could stay himself forever; he could finally sleep.

But if he sleeps, he will lose the stars. 

He will never see another supernova, or eat chips on a bright summer’s day. He will never save another species, or laugh and point at another archaelogy exhibit, or run like the dickens. He will never point his sonic screwdriver again, or hear another shell-shocked companion exclaim about the internal dimensions of the TARDIS, or discover something new in the universe.

He will never again hear the TARDIS hum, or open her doors not knowing where she has taken him. He will never again save a child, or inspire an uprising, or right an injustice. He will never again feel the surge of fierce joy on a day that everybody lives.

Today is a day that everybody lives. Can he truly die on a day that everybody lives?

He closes his eyes. There is acceptance here at the end – and what’s more, there’s peace.

“Step back,” he says, reopening his eyes. “Far back. I’ve been holding this in for longer than you know.”

“Doctor,” Clara says, soft. Her eyes are shiny. 

They both hug him. He holds them close, only partly to stay upright. Clara kisses his hair; Bill smiles at him, her face bright and full of joy. 

“Go,” he says, faux-grumpy, when the hugs end.

They stand out of the way. The TARDIS will protect them. 

The Doctor has no strength left. His clock has hit midnight, and the end is upon him. 

“It has been an honour to travel with you, my friends,” he says with the last of his breaths, and fills his mind with their joyous faces before tipping his head back and letting the floodgates open.

Regeneration energy floods the TARDIS. He goes smiling into the light.

❧

The Doctor’s eyes open slowly, on a long exhale. The pain has been left behind, and this new body is practically bursting with vigour. It's a fast body, the Doctor can tell, one that will run and jump and never stop. The Doctor's last self was so tired, his mind exhausted and his shoulders bowed with the weight of the world; but the happiness, relief, and freedom that suffused his consciousness in his last hour must have bled into his regeneration. The Doctor has never felt so alive.

“Lungs and breath capacity - la-ta-tum-tum-tum - check. Hearts, both beating. Eyes, both working. Hair – as bouncy as I feel." A jig proves that the legs are as quick as expected, with the hair bouncing along. "I like it.”

Bill is smiling, a little tremulously. “You’re a lot more excitable this time, Doctor.”

“Am I? I suppose I am. He was a bit dour, wasn’t he?”

“Maybe,” Clara says. “But that didn’t matter. He was kind. He was a good man.”

The TARDIS hums, and the Doctor runs a hand along her railing. A slim hand, no wrinkles or lines. A young hand. Young again? It feels like it.

“Here,” Clara says, near at hand. “Would you like to see your new face?”

It’s thoughtful, and the Doctor smiles at her, taking the mirror. The attack eyebrows took the last self by surprise – perhaps they’ve returned. They were good eyebrows. 

Oh. No attack eyebrows. Arched eyebrows that look like they will be able to speak volumes with a single quirk. Squarish, determined face. Laugh lines around sharp eyes, with their echoes framing an ample, smiling mouth. It is a joyful face, a face at peace. The Doctor is pleased. Though - 

“Still not ginger.” 

Bill laughs. “You wanted to be ginger?”

“Someday, Doctor,” Clara says, smiling. “Someday.”

The Doctor snaps the mirror shut and hands it back to Clara. Life begins again. The past becomes memory, and the future is a bright new day. 

“Right then,” she says, smiling at her friends. “Where to first?”

❧


End file.
